Essence/Landmark - evil? What's the deal?
generique
625 Posts
Do people have an opinion on Werner Erhard and the workshops he designed? That shit is very influential and yet pretty invisible. Thousands of people follow these courses. Some of my friends attended them, among them one of my best friends, and I'm puzzled because none of them can tell me exactly what it's all about. I hear some zen and some common knowledge group-psychiatry. Anyway, I'm not sure I like this phenomenon. Problem is, you might believe you can change yourself, but your environment doesn't always reward your new found (over-) assertiveness. Plus: some of the models that do get explained to me are huge simplifications of human nature and they are very instrumental, which I don't like because it leads to manipulative behavior. There are supposed to be 4 main types of people and I was told yesterday I am supposed to be of the dominant, controling type who doesn't show emotions blah blah. Is this creepy or is it helping mankind? And what's with this recruiting bussiness? Is this like some scientology stuff?Anyway, I saw this film "Semi Tough" from the 70's recently and it turns out this has been going on for decades now. Nice movie BTW about two professional football players who follow such a workshop only to get into pants of women, which would be the only valid reason I guess: 
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Love is here, here to stay
love is here, here to stay
It gets proven every day
love is here, here to stay
They both love Chinese food, he hates to dress
he loves to play pinball, she wants to play next
She likes her novels long, he's into comic books
they're gilt-edged polymorphous urban but somehow it works
She likes Truman Capote, he likes Gore Vidal
he likes Edgar Allan Poe, she's into Mean Joe Greene
She thinks eating meat's disgusting, he likes hot dogs
she's into Gestalt therapy
while est and the rest just make him ill[/b]
But love is here to stay
Ha! Well, that's nice for starters. Somehow pretty accurate... Only thing is I'm the only vegetarian among the people I know. Gotta remember to keep on loving these people that I find a bit suspect at the moment.
Any personal experience among the people that are logged in right now?
his real name is John Rosenberg, and i have a general rule that most of time anyone who changes their name is most likely a douche
everything i know about this shit leads me to believe its a cult, they break you down in order to build you back up, but you need them to do it, is companies are using this shit, thats fucked up, kinda like requiring drunk drivers or drug users to go to 12 step programs (which is a cult also)
But I've heard creepy stories were you are encouraged to get your whole environment involved and I know one girl who got her whole family in the program. Weirdest thing is the "second phase" in which you basically pay loads of money to be an assistant to the "teacher". This is economically brilliant of course. Gotta hand it to them. Also, I know someone who works in a government department and as a team building event they went to a Landmark workshop. Okay, toy with your own personallity, but having this stuff penetrating governments... Not being paranoid here. It was probably not a succces and next time they'll go rafting with the boss again.